Modern caliper brakes vs old cantis, I finally swapped back

I spent the last decade running newer Shimano linear pull brakes on my commuter, figured they were just better. Then I picked up a beat up 90s mountain bike with basic cantis at a garage sale in Portland for 40 bucks. After a proper setup with fresh pads and some toe-in adjustment, those old arms grab way harder than anything I had before. The modulation is night and day too, I can actually feather them on wet pavement instead of the on/off feel I got used to. Sure, they need more fiddling with the straddle cable height and the noodle setup takes patience, but once you get it, it just works. Anyone else gone back to older brake tech and been surprised, or am I just nostalgic for stuff that's actually worse?

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noahchen6d ago

Its the same thing with mechanical stuff in general, older designs that needed actual setup got dumped for stuff that "just works" out of the box. Think about guitars, old tube amps you had to bias yourself vs modelers, or even cast iron pans vs nonstick. The tradeoff is you lose the feel when everything gets dumbed down for the average user. Cantis force you to learn the brake, and once you do, that feedback loop is why they feel so good. Same reason old manual cars and mechanical watches still have fans. The "worse" tech is often just tech that asks more from you.

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